Interview Transcription Below
Finally, I want to dive into your role in the expert. And I don’t know this part of the business. I’m just assuming in the year, based on my experience, by working with other organizations that have an export division. And normally the export team is, you know, consists of very few people. Sometimes it’s just the export manager themselves and then they go and build a network, an external network, a network with other markets, and then slowly but surely nurture that and then find ways to drive the business on an international level.
I guess here my question to you is what type of a structure maybe you started with and what type of a structure you are with, you are you are with right now and trying to kind of gauge that you’re working with an internal team or is your team mainly in all these wonderful countries where you have other direct sales, direct contact, you know, people on the ground or your working through third party distributors.
Okay. So, in general, your job industry is, you know, we were not the PGA of the world and the conglomerate of international. So, we had always a hybrid model, you know, and when I started with the company, it was a very small hybrid model that we’ve grown in the last 20 years. And the model was basically you rely on some distributors around the world that you, you and your team, you keep going out and try to find those distributors and then you start putting boots on the ground and you put in companies within areas.
So, the model that we have now is in the team consisted of about 72 people and some of them are spread out all around the world. Canada, Mexico, Australia, Japan and there are some in Europe. To those, the 72 are excluding Europe, but those are some of them are on the ground in those countries and some of them are locally here in Ohio and they all support international distributors and international customers.
And the model works where the local boots on the groundwork with the distributors directly and they look for support from corporate for any resources. And then the markets that we don’t have anybody, you know, representing us, then we deal directly with them from here, from corporate. So when you look at your, you know, your organization today and getting to where you are, what do you see have been some of the challenges that you have faced, whether it’s people challenges, structural challenges or any type of a challenge, If you were to look at the biggest hurdles and what lessons you could, you could share with us from those challenges and overcoming that.
So, a couple of different challenges. You’ve got what we call the cultural challenges, and then you got what we call the business challenges. So, the business challenges, as you have known me, because I’ve been with the Global for 30 plus years. Back then, the company was not well known internationally. Everybody here in the U.S. knew Gojo and then they got to know Purell.
But internationally, we were still what we call the new kid on the block. We were the new company. We were the company from the U.S. that nobody knew about. So, the first challenge was not to assume that everybody knew your company and you had to build some of your business about that assumption and teach them and let them know who we are.
So that’s one of the big on the business side. On the cultural side, it’s always important when you’re dealing with different cultures and different languages to allow time for communication twice than you normally do when language is not a barrier. So, when language is not a barrier, but you still when language is a barrier and you have culture that’s different, you must be more attentive and more in tune what’s going on?
And I always tell my sales team, God gave you two ears and one mouth. You listen twice, you talk once, and that’s something you must learn to listen. Because if somebody is English is not their first language and they’re translating as they’re speaking, you must pay attention to what they’re saying because they’re trying to give you as much understanding as they can.
And you must try to then translate what they’re saying. And then and then respond to them. So, it’s very important to listen to your customers, listen to your sales team that are overseas. Listen to your distributors and try to don’t be afraid to answer the question with another question. I’m sorry. I didn’t understand what you’re trying to say.
I didn’t I didn’t quite get one. Is this what you were asking me? And then facilitate that and not assume that the first thing that comes out of their mouth is exactly what they were saying? And then especially when you start getting into a little bit of a conflict situation. So culturally you must do the language you have to do, you know, and you must be open to adaptation because of the cultures are different.
I love this. I think you’ve brought in a nice angle. One is the people do not know who we are. And today I think a lot of organizations that want to expand and sometimes might have the wrong assumptions, you know, starting into meetings or conversations with the same position that power or perceived power that they might have from any local players.
Yet we get that is not the case. So in terms of building that relationship, building that trust, I’m giving an opportunity for the other party to get to know maybe the not just the brand, but the values of the people that they know your values, the way you do business, your reputation, what you stand for, and then finding a way to see is, you know, how do we then co-exist?
How do we bring up who we are and who you are together? And we make this even the more successful partnership. So that that is fantastic and that’s very important from a co-existing. You as a as an individual, you’re trying to establish a relationship with a distributor or a customer. You don’t want to come across that you’re the one who knows everything, and you’re coming to impose or trying to sell them or trying to give them what your what you know, because you don’t want to come as this American English, whatever, Lebanese arrogant that’s come in to sell me something you want to come across that you know I’m a I’m a
person and I have some knowledge, but I’m here to help you with that. I’m not here to impose and I’m not here to tell you how it needs to be done. I’m here to tell you how it was done in certain countries. But let’s see how it can work, because you’re the expert in that country. I love what you’re saying because, you know, a lot of time, you know, there is there is a some of the principal organizations I’ve worked with that you look at international as the dumping ground, if you know what I mean.
You know, whenever you start growing in your local markets and let’s just find new places to simply ship stuff to help us hit our targets, that is one approach. I think, you know, again, if I might say, a lot of the smaller organization find that just making selling the quantity might be appealing in the short term, but in the long term, if you sell, if you send the quantities to the wrong markets and you have the wrong partners on the ground, you can end up doing a lot more damage to the brand and to the entire, you know, goodwill that you have built.
Then I guess one thing that I that really makes music to my ear is the concept of partnership, the concept of choosing the right distributor, the concept of even being aware of the lack of potential communication gaps due to cultural and linguistic capability so that you have double complexity and, you know, I think today the message that maybe I want to highlight here is that once you enter into distribution relationship with international player, right, it needs to be an ongoing relationship.
And it’s something where you you’ve got to set a common goal, a common objective. You know, what are we going after on both sides and then what can we do to help you out and what can you do to bring this mission and vision on, you know, to talk to life in your local market? So maybe a question here around selecting those relationship.
And, you know, when you go into a market, it’s a clean slate. You know, how do you know, are there any tips from entering multitudes of different markets that you tend to gravitate towards a certain type of structure, of certain type of, you know, psychographic within a certain organization, demographics, psychographic. So, what do they value or things like that that would help that would help you in selecting and choosing the right partner?
Fatty Yeah. So let me back up a little bit. It all starts from the mission of the company, you know, is the mission of the company is very saying centric into growing into one country in the U.S. Well then, you’re right this is where the branding doesn’t make doesn’t, they don’t care about it internationally. They’ll dump the products and they let you sell.
They’ll sell some products here and there, and that can hurt them in the long run. So, if you follow the mission and the mission says, look, we want to be the global leader in that industry, so then you must start looking at customers and distributors and partners that start sharing some of your same vision, mission and objectives.
So, when we start looking at a partner, whether it’s a distributor or a customer or even hiring people at the local level, we start saying think globally and act locally. You must act as a local. You know, the problems around the world are the same. So, you think globally, you know, the pandemic has taught us, you know, look how fast COVID spreads.
Everybody had the same problem. You know, you know, patients dying, and patients needed ventilations. People can go out, people without rest, rest in restaurants can’t either. So, the problems were the same. But the way you give the solution might be a little bit different based on the country and what is the structure of the country, not just from a structure of logistics and building, but even the culture and how they do business and how they interact within pandemic.
Some governments are stricter than others when there’s a pandemic like that. So, you must be aware of these things. And that’s where not just in pandemic in normal days, you must look at a partner that can share some of the vision and some of the some of the missions that you’re trying to accomplish. If your mission is, for example, for us is health and well-being solution.
And if somebody’s selling, let’s say cigarettes and not selling cigarettes, but that doesn’t work from our standpoint. So, you must look at some partners that have some commonality from what you’re trying to accomplish from a mission and a vision. As I and I think this is very, very insightful and today many individuals sometimes might have smaller organizations where maybe their mission and vision might not be fully, fully aligned or fully developed, and they might know what makes them tick on the inside.
Yet highly recommend. Maybe doing that is mission and vision exercises. You can go to help uncover what you are all about, where you’re going and the more you structure that and they say yes, that is a quarter of that that says thoughts are things. Things have gravity and gravity attracts. So, the moment you can verbalize your mission vision.
So, thoughts are things. Things have a gravity and gravity attracts you then align. You create a path in which people with similar values, similar beliefs, similar goals start lining up. And there you are. You know, getting your potential partners. And then it’s all about building that relationship and then seeing what works and what doesn’t.
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